Metro News & Reviews

A look back at some of the year’s most popular and interesting posts on The Source

The demolition of half of the Mulholland Bridge in July. Photo by Peter Watkinson/Metro.

As 2011 winds down, the following is a look back at our more popular posts from the past year. Not surprisingly, many of the posts are from earlier in 2011, which tended to be heavy on big news.

And equally non-shocking, readers showed the most interest in posts about Metro projects either under construction or in the planning pipeline — the Expo Line, Crenshaw/LAX Line, Westside Subway Extension, Gold Line Foothill Extension, Regional Connector, ExpressLanes, Orange Line Extension and the Van Nuys Rapidway, to name a few. Many, of course, are receiving dollars from the Measure R sales tax increase that Los Angeles County voters approved in 2008.

Please feel free to comment if you feel as if the following list doesn’t reflect the big events or the real news of the past year.

Transit guide to Carmageddon (July 15). No surprise here. Before the big tear-down of half the Mulholland Bridge, people were seriously concerned with getting around — especially between the San Fernando Valley and LAX. Several other posts about Carmageddon and feared traffic impacts were also among our most popular posts of the year.

Metrolink adds Angels Express trains (March 29). Metro is one of the five counties that funds the commuter rail agency that aggressively added special service trains in the past year. It’s clear to me that readers want alternative ways to travel to events around So Cal and, thus, no surprise that this post got a lot of attention.

Metro begins testing real-time bus arrival system (March 2). The Nextrip system gave Metro customers a way to use their computers or cell phones to see when their bus would be arriving. In the months since, most people seem to like Nextrip with some occasional complaints that it’s buggy or not working. I’ve found it works very well. Here’s the desktop version and here’s the mobile version.

Tracks from the old Santa Monica Air Line in an industrial section of Santa Monica. Photo by Carter Rubin/Metro.

Expo Line Phase 2 construction is a “go” (March 18). The news that the Board of the Expo Line Construction Authority approved a construction contract for the Culver City-Santa Monica portion of the light rail was greeted warmly by readers. The first phase of Expo is expected to open in 2012 and phase 2 by 2015. Remembrance of trains past: The Santa Monica Air Line (June 22) was also very popular. Carter’s photos of what remains of the old rail line that followed Exposition Boulevard was a hit for an obvious reason: the old line is about to come back to life as part of the second phase of the Expo Line.

Metro to purchase Los Angeles Union Station (Feb. 24). The agency indeed went ahead and purchased the venerable train station later in the year for $75 million. The sale included 38 acres of land and 5.9-million-square feet of building entitlements. The agency is currently in the process of hiring an architectural firm to draw up a master plan for the station and surrounding land.

Westside Subway Extension receives $640-million federal loan (July 6). The loan comes from the federal TIFIA program that helps lock down good interest rates and other terms. The upfront money will give Metro more flexibility with paying for the subway project since funds from Measure R for the subway come in later years.

High-Speed Rail Authority reviews alternatives for routing in the Los Angeles area (March 3). A look at various options for the bullet train in the L.A. metro area, many of which are controversial. Of course, by fall the estimated cost of the Anaheim-to-San Francisco part of the project had more than doubled to $98.5 billion and it remains unclear where the funding will come from for the north and south parts of the line.

Here are some other posts from the past year that were also popular among readers or I thought represented some of more interesting material: